Counting heads: Towns grapple with quorum issues

Yarmouth Town Clerk Jane Hibbert remembers town meetings taking weeks, when a quorum of people would show up for one night but not for the next. Bourne Town Moderator Robert Parady recalls rustling up, with last-minute phone calls, whomever was within running distance of town meeting to meet the quorum.

BOURNE – 125 registered voters to start, and 100 to maintain a meeting

BREWSTER – 200 registered voters

CHATHAM – 100 registered voters

DENNIS – at least 150 registered voters for annual, and 75 for a special

EASTHAM – not less than 5percent of voting list

FALMOUTH – 50 percent plus 1 of the 244 elected representatives

HARWICH – not fewer than 150 registered voters

MASHPEE – no quorum for annual, and 100 registered voters for a special

ORLEANS – 200 registered voters

PROVINCETOWN – 100 registered voters

SANDWICH – no quorum requirement

TRURO – 100 registered voters

WELLFLEET – 6 percent of registered voters

YARMOUTH – no quorum requirement

Source: Town bylaws and charters; Town officials

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Yarmouth Town Clerk Jane Hibbert remembers town meetings taking weeks, when a quorum of people would show up for one night but not for the next. Bourne Town Moderator Robert Parady recalls rustling up, with last-minute phone calls, whomever was within running distance of town meeting to meet the quorum.

In January, the Truro Board of Selectmen put out extra calls, emails and fliers to voters for a special town meeting to ask for police cruisers, after a November town meeting was never convened because of attendance below the 100-voter quorum.

Both Yarmouth and Bourne have drastically reduced their legal requirements to get their town meetings underway. In 1985, Yarmouth went from 250 to a zero quorum for both annual and special town meetings, essentially returning to the way it was in the 1970s. In 2011 Bourne dropped its quorum to 125 people to start a meeting, and then 100 to keep the meeting going.

In Truro, an upcoming review of the town charter might include looking at the quorum, said Selectman Jay Coburn, chairman of the board.

"It became disruptive and held people up," Parady said of larger quorum requirements. Typically the same 150 to 175 people will show up to town meeting no matter what, he said. But with a quorum of 200, "we always had to strain," he said. Now the town can start at 7 p.m. rather than delaying until 7:30 or 8 p.m., waiting for voters to show.

The Massachusetts Moderators Association generally recommends a zero quorum, according to association member Harry Terkanian, a former Wellfleet town moderator and current town administrator.

"Let it go," said former Yarmouth Town Moderator Tom George, in agreement. "To take the pragmatic side, you have your opportunity to get up there, and if you don't show up, that's a choice you make."

But so far, only two other towns on the Cape, along with Yarmouth, have gone to a zero quorum for their annual town meetings: Sandwich and Mashpee, although Mashpee requires 100 voters for a special town meeting. Ten towns have some form of quorum for town meetings, either a percentage of registered voters or a specific count of voters. Falmouth has the Cape's sole representative form of town meeting, where 50 percent plus 1 of the 244 elected representatives is considered a quorum. Barnstable does not have a town meeting.

A town meeting quorum is established locally by town charter or bylaws, according to the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth.

In Massachusetts, about 300 towns have town meetings, which serve as the legislative branch of town government. Of those 300, at least 16 have zero quorums, according to Harry Pape, chairman of the state moderators association. Pape is town moderator for Princeton.

Theories about achieving a quorum at town meeting and the value of having a quorum are varied and partly psychological, based on what Pape and others said. "If there wasn't a quorum, a lot of people would just stay home," Provincetown Town Moderator Mary-Jo Avellar said.

Partly to prevent "tyranny by a minority," Orleans has kept its 200-voter quorum, although a rash of attention-getting warrant articles has typically filled the town meeting seats without worry, said Orleans Selectman Sims McGrath Jr., board chairman. "If we were to return to a time where it was just mundane business, you could end up where 30 to 40 are making decisions for thousands, and is that really representative of the town's wishes?" McGrath said.

Other towns view the zero quorum as a motivator, to prevent governance by a few, because "nobody would want two or three people to show up and conduct the business," Pape said. Some towns juggle the lineup of warrant articles to ensure that the ones likely to draw a good crowd are sprinkled throughout the meeting.

Additionally, there's the whole question of addressing attendance problems with the use of newer technology, Pape said. Some people want to participate in town meeting from the comfort of their couch or use an absentee ballot. But, "that's not what this is all about," Pape said of the state association's views. "Town meeting is about getting together as a community and making a decision."

More than a dozen Massachusetts towns, though, are using hand-held voting devices for town meeting attendees, in a modest example of new technology, Pape said. Some towns in New Hampshire, he said, are looking at conducting televised town meeting debates on one night and then gathering for a meeting to vote on the issues on another night.

The future of town meetings rests in the children who are in school now, Pape said. For that reason, the state association is focusing on educating children about town meeting, he said.

"We need to get more creative in the way we engage our citizens, to create interest and underscore the importance of people being involved," Coburn, in Truro, said.